


One After The Other

by Sohotthateveryonedied



Series: I See Dead People [5]
Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Brotherly Angst, Brothers, Character Death, Emotional Hurt, Fake Character Death, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt/Comfort, I make the rules, Pre-New 52, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Sees Dead People, because I am the god of this au, but not really, it's real for half a minute or so anyway, well I kinda mixed new 52 events into the pre 52 timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23640187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sohotthateveryonedied/pseuds/Sohotthateveryonedied
Summary: Tim's eyes lock on the apparition as a horrific realization slowly sinks in. Blue eyes. Black hair. The same face Tim has known by heart since his trip to the circus fifteen years ago.“No,” he whispers, a lump forming in his throat. “No way. This isn’t real. You’re not real.”
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Damian Wayne, Tim Drake & Dick Grayson
Series: I See Dead People [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1557490
Comments: 37
Kudos: 609





	One After The Other

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooooo basically I made it so that Damian and Dick's death happen like they did in the New-52 universe where Damian gets skewered by a sword and Dick dies a couple months later in Forever Evil #6, but it's in the Pre-52 timeline. Because fuck the New-52 except for a select few events. Also if you read the comic where Dick "dies," Lex Luthor kills Dick for a little while because Reasons and then revives him and then Bruce decides that Dick should fake his death and become a spy for a while. So yeah.

Tim has been glued to his desk, doing homework for...well, he’s not exactly sure how long. Long enough that his eyes feel like sandpaper and every blink takes an hour. It was Dick’s prodding that got him to sign up for online courses at Gotham U in the first place, and it’s Alfred’s insistence now that has Tim cooped up in his room instead of helping Bruce and Dick against the Syndicate like he should be.  
  
So what if he’s still riding out a brutal wave of pneumonia? That doesn’t make him _useless._ Every bone in Tim’s body yearns to be out there, doing his part and fighting alongside his family where he belongs. Still, even Batman himself can’t oppose Alfred’s will.  
  
The clacking of Tim’s keyboard sounds through the room as he revises an essay that he’s pretty sure is about Macbeth. He could be wrong, though.   
  
He can hear Alfred puttering around down the hall, trying to make himself useful with his feather duster and iron will. Tim can relate. Watching Dick unmasked like that on television made Tim’s blood run cold, and he hasn’t been able to warm it since. Every thought goes back to what could be happening while Tim sits in here like a coward.  
  
“Stop looking at me like that,” he tells the empty room. “If you have a problem, you can just say so.”  
  
Alfred hums down the hallway. One of his dusty operas, Tim thinks.  
  
“What do you expect me to do?” he says after a silent moment. “Alfred won’t let me leave, and there’s not much I can do that isn’t already being done anyway.”  
  
Distantly, a clock on the wall marks the hour with an echoing tick.  
  
“You think I don’t know that?” Tim looks over his shoulder and glares at the empty air behind him. “If you’re so concerned, why aren’t _you_ doing something to help?” Then he sighs and turns back around. “Fine, fine, I’m sorry. That was a low blow.”  
  
He goes back to typing, if only to keep his jittery hands busy. “Still, it’s probably a good thing we’re stuck here instead of out with the others. You’d just boss me around the whole time, and god knows it’s easier to avoid looking crazy in the privacy of my own room than out there in the field.”  
  
A second goes by, then Tim scoffs. “Yeah, like I’m going to take advice from you. Look, can’t you go make yourself busy somewhere else so I can—” Then his gaze catches movement by the window and Tim gasps, surging up from his chair. “Holy fucking—”  
  
The chair topples to the ground and nearly trips Tim over in the process, but he grips the edge of the desk in his scramble to stay standing. His eyes lock on the apparition as a horrific realization slowly sinks in. Blue eyes. Black hair. The same face Tim has known by heart since his trip to the circus fifteen years ago.  
  
“No,” he whispers, a lump forming in his throat. “No way. This isn’t real. You’re not real.”  
  
It has to be a trick of the light. A beam reflecting off of glass somewhere. A shadow from the curtains. But the window is closed, the curtains are drawn, and there hasn’t been a breeze all day.  
  
Dick’s smoky form looks at Tim in confusion, as if he doesn’t know why he’s here either. His hair is messy and he’s pale—far too pale. Tim can see the opposite wall right through him.   
  
“Tim? What are you…” Then Dick’s eyes widen as understanding sinks in. “Oh.”  
  
Trembling, Tim takes a step forward. He blinks repeatedly, trying to make the sight before him disappear and prove it’s all just a fever dream or a hologram or a goddamn _hallucination._ He’ll gladly take delusional psychosis over the truth that threatens to frame itself now.  
  
Tim reaches out to touch Dick’s arm, and he doesn’t know what he’s hoping for until his fingers pass right through the spirit, leaving nothing but an eerie coldness seeping into his bones. Like Dick isn’t even here to begin with.  
  
“No,” Tim shudders out as he snatches his arm back like it’s been burned. His heartbeat thunders in his chest and he closes his eyes. “No, no, no, _no._ This isn’t real. You’re fine. You’re—You were _fine.”_ He’s gasping now, and absently he wonders if this is what hyperventilating feels like.   
  
He opens his eyes, but Dick’s ghost hasn’t moved. If anything, he just looks sadder than before. Bile creeps up Tim’s throat, thick and sour as he mutters, “Oh, god. Oh, god, this isn’t happening.”  
  
It’s not. It can’t be. Dick isn’t...he _can’t be._ He’s supposed to be fine—that’s what he promised Tim all those months ago. That he will always be there for him, no matter what. He’s not supposed to _die._  
  
Before he knows it Tim’s knees hit the floor, but his body is more rubber than flesh at this point and he barely registers the jolt in his kneecaps. He can’t bring himself to do anything but stare up at his big brother’s ghost and plead with the universe to reverse this. Wake him up from this nightmare. Don’t take his brother away from him, not again—he doesn’t think he can _take_ another loss.   
  
But there Dick remains, ghostly and translucent and Tim can't pretend that he doesn’t know what this means. It happened when his mom died, when Dad died, when Conner and Bart and Damian died like dominoes toppling down, one after the other. Tim knows death as well as he knows his own reflection in the mirror. He is acquainted with death’s cruel grip better than most would ever want to be, and he’s learned by now that it doesn’t bend to pleas.  
  
With pity shining in his eyes, Dick reaches out to touch Tim—to wrap him up in his once warm embrace like he always does whenever Tim needs comforting, but he might as well be made of helium with the way his hands pass straight through him. A tear slips down Tim’s cheek.  
  
That’s when Tim feels another cold presence at his side, sharing in his shock. “Is he…?”  
  
But Tim doesn’t answer. He can’t. Every function in his body has come to a grinding halt because _Dick is dead._ And all Tim wants now is to time travel back to an hour ago when he deludedly thought everything might actually turn out okay.  
  
And in the very back of his brain, the part that is somehow still working despite the wash of ice water consuming every rational thought, Tim wonders how the hell he’s going to come back from this. How _any_ of them are. First Damian, and now Dick, so soon after? Tim still catches Bruce sitting on Damian’s bed and hugging his son’s favorite hoodie at night when he thinks everyone else is asleep. Alfred still cries whenever he sees Damian’s old drawings hung on the refrigerator.  
  
And now Dick is gone too. How are they going to recover from this? Tim doesn’t think he has it in him to go on after yet another loss.  
  
Damian steps forward past Tim, his small hand outstretched. “Grayson?” he says tentatively, like he wants to believe it as much as he doesn’t.  
  
Dick’s eyes lock on him then, and Tim knows he can see him too because he smiles for the first time since they buried Damian’s corpse in the Wayne family cemetery. “Dami,” he breathes, eyes lighting up despite the fact that he and his little brother are now both fallen heroes, one with a gaping wound in his middle and one whose corpse isn't even cold yet. But still Dick smiles like he's never been happier than he is at this moment.  
  
Damian goes to take Dick’s hand (their skin matches now: both ghostly pale like a fogged-over window) but as soon as his fingers make contact, something happens that makes Tim's heart stop. Dick’s apparition flickers like a candle in the breeze, making Damian flinch back. Dick’s image wavers again, fading in and out like audio in a dead zone.  
  
“What did you do?” Tim demands, wheeling on Damian. “What did you do to him?”  
  
Damian looks scared for once. “Nothing, I just touched him!”  
  
Tim tries to touch Dick, to do _something,_ but he might as well be grabbing air. “Dick, what’s happening?”  
  
Dick looks down at his own hands, watching as they flicker and fade before his eyes. “I think—” But the rest of whatever he was about to say comes out as a whisper, and Tim’s heart leaps into his throat. He's seen this before and he knows how it ends.  
  
“Dick!” Tim lunges for him, but he’s not fast enough. The mist encompasses Dick before he can stop it, swallowing him whole like a rogue hurricane, and then he’s just _gone._ Gone, like he never existed to begin with. Tim whirls around and his eyes are wild, scanning the room for any indication that he didn’t just lose his brother forever, that he’s still _here._  
  
“Dick!” he calls. “Dick, come back!” Something inside of Tim’s chest crumbles and falls apart as a sob breaks through. “Come back.”  
  
“Where is he?” Damian asks. “Where did he go?”  
  
Tim ignores him and searches the room, on alert for the slightest glimpse of blue eyes and a telltale Nightwing insignia because he can’t just be _gone,_ can he? If Dick truly is dead, then that means Tim should be able to find him; that’s the _rule._ Ghosts can’t just leave whenever they want to, which is the only reason Damian has stuck around for this long. Dick should still _be here._  
  
So why isn’t he? Why did he leave Tim behind?  
  
The door opens behind him then and Alfred comes running in, still holding his feather duster. He must have heard the ruckus and realized it was more than Tim routinely talking to himself. “Master Tim, what’s the matter?”  
  
“He’s gone,” Tim finds himself murmuring, though he isn’t entirely sure if he’s talking to Alfred or not. His eyes are wide and glassy. “H-He was just here a second ago. I don't— He can’t be _gone.”_  
  
“Who is gone? What are you talking about?”  
  
Alfred grabs him by the shoulders, but Tim shakes him off. “Dick—he _—_ _Dick.”_ Tim’s choking on sobs now and he knows he must look like a hysterical mess, but he can’t bring himself to care. Not when his limbs are numb and his lungs are tight and Dick is gone and it feels like Tim is _drowning._  
  
He can’t concentrate on Alfred, who is kneeling at his side and asking him what’s wrong, asking why Tim is crying like his entire universe just shattered into pieces right in front of him. Damian’s voice echoes somewhere in the background, apologizing because _I don’t know what happened, I didn’t even do anything, it wasn’t my fault—_  
  
A distant part of Tim wants to reassure Damian that it’s okay, he isn’t angry with him. After all, he knows as much about what just happened as Damian does. One minute Dick was here, and in the next he was gone. Tim’s _brother_ is gone, and he finds that he just doesn’t have the capacity for anything else right now.  
  
So, with nothing else to do, Tim cries into Alfred's shoulder and mourns his brothers.  
  
  


* * *

  
  
When Bruce comes home that night with sad eyes and a grim expression that spells bad news, he doesn’t need to say anything.    
  
Tim already knows.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!! This was the last fic I had lined up for this AU so uhhhhh I have no idea what I'll write next. 'Tis a mystery, folks. Anyways I triple dog dare you to comment and tell me what your favorite animal is.
> 
> [Feel free to mosey on down to my Tumblr!](http://sohotthateveryonedied.tumblr.com/)


End file.
